tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post6534820936636864515..comments2015-08-02T03:10:39.933-04:00Comments on In the Middle: 5 letters on human natureJeffrey Cohenhttps://plus.google.com/110433684739546897626noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-48718582578504498092008-06-02T23:49:00.000-04:002008-06-02T23:49:00.000-04:00No problem Karl, I know i only touched the surface...No problem Karl, <BR/><BR/>I know i only touched the surface of these ideas, and I know there is a lot to be addressed surrounding the questions of animality and medieval texts as well as the post-human, and, in fact, the way that the medieval offers a new form of beast to the post-human... and all of these things in ways that I haven't yet addressed! It is a lot to think about, a lot to research, and time, reading, thinking, and synthesis where it is possible, will hopefully bring these ideas to light. <BR/><BR/>yours, <BR/>Erinerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17126396488526797041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-11339217500406542432008-06-01T08:57:00.000-04:002008-06-01T08:57:00.000-04:00Erin, when I meet you, as I'm sure I will some day...Erin, when I meet you, as I'm sure I will some day, I'll have to apologize in person for the tone of my posts here. I was deep in my diss's master thesis at this point and saw nothing but it. Because your book didn't give me exactly what I wanted at that moment, I read it impatiently, and it shows here. So: my apologies.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-63253636381076617332008-06-01T01:33:00.000-04:002008-06-01T01:33:00.000-04:00Thanks for getting my point and for also prompting...Thanks for getting my point and for also prompting me to think about further projects Karl et al. <BR/><BR/>Best, <BR/>Erinerinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17126396488526797041noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-59945862807756631502007-02-23T20:34:00.000-05:002007-02-23T20:34:00.000-05:00Let's try that again.What did you make of Labbie's...Let's try that again.<BR/><BR/><I>What did you make of Labbie's chapter on animality and desire?</I><BR/><BR/>Here's the short answer, with possibly a longer answer tomorrow.<BR/><BR/>Having read Labbie's introduction and that chapter, the really short answer is: produces some interesting readings (of Marie de France and Jean de Arras and a kind of lyric fablieau by Arnaut Daniel, so far as I understand it, Lacan and Freud's Wolf- and Ratman), but it's not really my bag. Here are some key quotes: "Bisclavret and Melusine are both courtly romances that configure desire as that which cannot properly reach its goal because of the abject horror bound to the search for pleasure" (106); "Any attempt to sublimate animality will result in its emergence in a different, potentially more threatening form that will carry with it the force and power of the symptom that returns from the place of repression" (90).<BR/><BR/>Slightly longer version. Labbie's interested in Lacan as Realist w/out God (as opposed, it seems, to Derrida's nominalism) got at through a complex play with the Lacanian Real and the Scholastic Real and discussions of universals and individuals in Boethius's Commentary on Porphyry. Somehow, animals in humans figure into this (citing, as E. Vance did, 'si est homo, est animal'), as figures of <BR/>drives, it seems, and of the unconscious, the forces neither subject to reason nor containable in language.<BR/><BR/>I found it a bit disappointing that: a) Labbie didn't engage with Derrida's work on animals except for his stuff on Heidegger and Uexkull from <I>Of Spirit</I>; b) her exegesis of Agamben's <I>The Open</I> were just as opaque as the original; c) the animal seems to be functioning in a pretty metaphoric rather than material way; d) symptom of 'c,' the only 'animals' she deals with are human/animal hybrids. Sure, I think all creatures are hybrids, but somehow I get the sense that Labbie's no more willing than Lacan to go after the human itself, especially as it relates to l'animot, or, at the least, to see what the concept of "the animal" does <I>for</I> the human.<BR/><BR/>So, I leave the final word up to people who know their Lacan (but I do have a question for you (hypothetical) people: she spends about 10 pages defending Lacan from charges of antifeminism for his bit about women existing only with a strikethrough (you know, crossed out). It's obvious enough to me what Lacan meant by that. Why should Labbie have to defend him at such length?), but for me, the animal guy, I have to say that while I'm pleased and surprised to see Bisclavret <I>still</I> producing good new readings, her work doesn't really help with with what I'm doing with animals. For that, I think I'm going to have to look to works on feminism and reason and feminism and violence. This summer's project.<BR/><BR/>--<BR/>Vis-a-vis empathy: <I>I'd actually love to know Michael's thoughts on this</I><BR/><BR/>Me too. Or anybody's. I feel up a creek (or just creaky) on this.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-46070844725840667722007-02-23T16:04:00.000-05:002007-02-23T16:04:00.000-05:00It's kind of eerie, but in completely different co...It's kind of eerie, but in completely different contexts--pedagogical, personal, and more professional--several people over the past few months have argued to me that part of the basis of empathy is identification--I can empathize with you if I can somehow *identify* with you, which statement is, I guess, meant to imply that, at some level, markers of "sameness" need to be involved. I've always understood empathy in a way directly opposed to this line of thinking. Empathy's power, I really believe, inheres in the ability of the empathizer to *feel* and *care* for someone or something for which categories of sameness might actually be impossible to formulate. I'd actually love to know Michael's thoughts on this, from the perspective of his reading in attachment theory, or psychoanalysis more generally.<BR/><BR/>I further think the term "human," although it carries [deadly] historical baggage, also contains within itself a powerful engine for transhuman empathetic energies that could do powerful good in this world.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-90828872259929899512007-02-23T11:31:00.000-05:002007-02-23T11:31:00.000-05:00We can't, I don't think, discard emapthy as someth...<I>We can't, I don't think, discard emapthy as something that is critical to thinking about rights, or more broadly, ethics</I><BR/><BR/>Perhaps not. But there's still the appropriative nature of empathy, insofar as I don't think of it as a "feeling with" so much as an imagining of the other "feeling as myself." If empathy's a heart of ethics, then it seems to limit us to acting only for others with whom we identify. So I'd like to dislodge empathy to allow for an ethics without identification.<BR/><BR/>Uebel:<BR/><BR/>Labbie's book. Just started it. I can't say that I'm not enjoying it, not yet, but I do have to say that this sentence gave me pause:<BR/><BR/>"As [the sign] is always bound to another signifier, the sign rarely stands in solitude, and it participates in the signifying chain that marks the relationship between language and desire" (11). Now, I'm not the sharpest tack in the, uh, tack-box, and lord knows I'm not (yet) deeply versed in theory, so perhaps I'm missing something subtle here, but I can't help but be reminded of Althusser's "Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings is such that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed" and its sly slip between "hardly ever" and "always" (hat tip to <A HREF="http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/theory_tuesday_iv/" REL="nofollow">Bérubé</A>). In other words, is the sign <I>always</I> bound (seems likely) or is it <I>rarely</I> bound (unlikely) or is there just a silent "always" (as in between the subject/verb of the last independent clause, "it [always] participates"? I'll keep going, but this sentence really threw me.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-57715686007836027122007-02-22T10:21:00.000-05:002007-02-22T10:21:00.000-05:00We can't, I don't think, discard emapthy as someth...We can't, I don't think, discard emapthy as something that is critical to thinking about rights, or more broadly, ethics. Peter Singer's whole argument re: animal rights is heavily dependent on the fact that animals suffer and experience pain. My interest in the suffering of animals [if I have any, and yes, I do] will lodge to a certain extent in my *caring* about whether or not an animal is/might be suffering/about to suffer [as well as it is lodged to a certain extent in my *caring* about whether or not animals can experience pleasure/joy/happiness. I agree with Jane Bennet that ethics are not possible without enchantment, even wonder: first, wonder, then, caring, then, ethics.Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-80472438721541926892007-02-22T08:17:00.000-05:002007-02-22T08:17:00.000-05:00Erin Felicia Labbie, Lacan's Medievalism(Minnesota...<I>Erin Felicia Labbie, Lacan's Medievalism(Minnesota UP, 2006).</I><BR/><BR/>Oh. <I>That</I> Labbie. The one JJC mentioned here a month ago or so and that I expressed uncertainty about. Er. I'll have a look at it soon.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-81773024678239913922007-02-21T23:29:00.000-05:002007-02-21T23:29:00.000-05:00Erin Felicia Labbie, Lacan's Medievalism(Minnesota...Erin Felicia Labbie, <I>Lacan's Medievalism</I>(Minnesota UP, 2006). Chapter is "Duality, Ambivalence, and the Animality of Desire," pp. 66-106. <BR/><BR/><I>k'homme</I> it is.michael uebelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-72081581346264837992007-02-21T22:23:00.000-05:002007-02-21T22:23:00.000-05:00Here's the cliff notes version of the thought behi...<A HREF="http://jjcohen.blogspot.com/2007/01/another-nature.html" REL="nofollow">Here's the cliff notes version</A> of the thought behind this top-heavy clause, <I>No more than I know how to dislodge death from its overwhelming symbolic force.</I> The cliff-notes version of my thoughts on animals, well, I can send you my Exemplaria article before it comes out (no date yet), but not, like, soon, because I just want to keep my head down and finish the diss., and soon, which means not having to <I>engage</I> too much vis-a-vis that article.<BR/><BR/><I>What did you make of Labbie's chapter on animality and desire?</I><BR/><BR/>I don't know it at all. Can I have a longer cite? Sounds good, and maybe useful for my Kzoo anthropophagy paper.<BR/><BR/>Just read a very good piece on 13th-century angelology and 19th-century ethography, Lorraine Daston's "Intelligences: Angels, Animals, and Human," in <I>Thinking with Animals</I> (Columbia UP, 2005), in what is, so far, a good anthology. I can't say my suspicion of subjectivity in ethical systems begins with this piece, but it's certainly helped me think through some of my issues with subjectivity, although not in ways that I can quite yet explain...<BR/><BR/>(I prefer k'homme to K-Man. Or perhaps Madame de Steel)Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-33769570489030894502007-02-21T17:45:00.000-05:002007-02-21T17:45:00.000-05:00I recall recommending Eigen's book Ecstasy in this...I recall recommending Eigen's book <I>Ecstasy</I> in this forum, and I like his take on binaries of human nature as dissociative in form. This view accords well with Bromberg's important work on dissociation as well as with Fischer's. <BR/><BR/>Someday, Karl, you'll have to give me the cliff-note version to your thinking about animals and the human. I've haven't been able to follow it as strenuously as I ought to have. I'm still trying to get a handle on humanist ethics, so I can't say I'm up to speed with your thinking, which seems beyond me.<BR/><BR/>Side-question to the K-Man: What did you make of Labbie's chapter on animality and desire? I finished a favorable review of her book, and have been in contact with her regarding other projects she has going on. She really seems to be doing some creative work.michael uebelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-48409890454048369822007-02-21T16:15:00.000-05:002007-02-21T16:15:00.000-05:00I'm down with biological determinism insofar as we...I'm down with biological determinism insofar as we are inescapably embodied creatures, but I do think the paleoanthropological/evolutionary material Pinker et al push is claptrap. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I think it's unlikely. Again, I'd suggest the McKinnon.<BR/><BR/><I>I do not agree with Karl that evolution demands we abandon the "human" altogether [except I heartily share his condemnation of all the ways in which a supposed human/animal divide & hierarchy has caused a lot of misery in this world]. We *are* a unique species, just as my cat, Tom [yes, that's his cliched name!], belongs to a unique species.</I><BR/><BR/>Right. We're a unique species. So are cats. My objection is to l'animot, the homogenized group of creatures known as 'the animal' a group that as such either lacks all that makes up the human (reason, soul, rights in themselves rather than in imitation of human rights) or merits some respect according to how much they resemble some (necessarily idealized) conception of the human. <BR/><BR/><I>You can discard the word "human" if you decide it carries too much negative [even deadly] excess of historical memory, but what will you put in its place? How will we name ourselves, and under what term will we place that which we do "in our name"?</I><BR/><BR/>I don't know. Right now, in ethical terms, I'm pretty much treading water until something better comes along, some mode of being/acting that doesn't involving extending (or not extending) rights to creatures to the degree that you recognize them as being more or less like yourself. For instance, I'd like to discard rights systems that are based around subjectivity or even empathy. No more than I know how to dislodge death from its overwhelming symbolic force (see my post on fish some months back), I don't know how to create or even imagine the ethics that would satisfy me. All I know is that anthropocentric rights (notice how I slipped from ethics into rights) systems are only provisionally satisfactory.Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-39253804144358766252007-02-21T14:32:00.000-05:002007-02-21T14:32:00.000-05:00I almost laughed out loud at JJC's musings over hi...I almost laughed out loud at JJC's musings over his Chaucer students slitting his throat and exulting in the bloodshed, a fate apparently nicely avoided by our "evolution." I'm sorry, but I do buy in quite heavily to many aspects of biological determinism [a la Wilson, Pinker, Dawkins, and company], but I've also always assumed that the longstanding historical debate--"are humans deep down mean and nasty or nice and generous?"--to have always been overly facile. Thanks to biology, in fact--whether in the work of Wilson or Barash--we now know that we are both, and there are good evolutionary reasons for being both--on separate occasions, and also simultaneously [indeed, Barash's view that generosity can also be advantageous, evolutionary-wise, is really just a nice way of still affirming evolutionary "fitness," by whatever means possible]. This reminds me, too, of something Iago says in "Othello":<BR/><BR/>". . . 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the<BR/>power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one<BR/>scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us<BR/>to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal<BR/>stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion."<BR/><BR/>Of course, we have to take into account that Iago is a liar, and also possibly lies even to himself.<BR/><BR/>I do not agree with Karl that evolution demands we abandon the "human" altogether [except I heartily share his condemnation of all the ways in which a supposed human/animal divide & hierarchy has caused a lot of misery in this world]. We *are* a unique species, just as my cat, Tom [yes, that's his cliched name!], belongs to a unique species. Tom and I are obviously different from each other, while we also share experience in certain biological and even "mind" processes. In the words of Barry Lopez, he belongs to one "nation" of beings, I to another. You can discard the word "human" if you decide it carries too much negative [even deadly] excess of historical memory, but what will you put in its place? How will we name ourselves, and under what term will we place that which we do "in our name"? The question is not purely academic [at least, I hope not].Eileen Joyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-58264444534009139702007-02-21T11:07:00.000-05:002007-02-21T11:07:00.000-05:00I believe that evolution requires us to get beneat...<I>I believe that evolution requires us to get beneath such categories and begin to partner the profound interweaving of multiple tendencies that give human nature the plasticity and persistence it demonstrates.</I><BR/><BR/>And I believe that evolution demands that we abandon the 'human' altogether, if it's understood as a human against the homogeneous group known as 'the animals.'<BR/><BR/>It's distressing, but typical, to see Brooks cite Pinker and to see the NY Times defend Evo-Devo. Not being at home right now, I don't have access to <A HREF="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/168737.ctl" REL="nofollow">this</A>, but I would strongly recommend this book (Susan McKinnon's <I>Neo-Liberal Genetics: he Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology</I> to anyone caught up in the notion that there's such thing as a 'selfish gene' (wtf?) or that some hypothetical UR-hunter/gatherer culture (whose every discourse was preceded with an *) predetermines our motivations now. I can't recommend McKinnon unreservedly, as she's caught up in the specialness of the human and a certainty in free choice, but, so far as this medievalist knows, her assault on Evo-Devos genetics, anthropology, and paleo-anthropology is unimpeachable.<BR/><BR/>I'd also recommend Matt Cartmill's <A HREF="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/CARVIE.html" REL="nofollow"><I>A View to a Death in the Morning</A></I> for an assault on the "hunting hypothesis," a long-discredited argument for the violent origins of the human species (rather than, I say more accurately, the violent core of the discourse of the differentially defined human), that seems to carry a lot of weight in various conservative or crypto-conservative world philosophies (whether of the fascist or dystopian variety).Karl Steelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.com